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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Town Talk: U.S. consulate has a star-spangled party for the Fourth — on the third

Consul-general Anne Callaghan was sent off to her new job in Albuquerque with a huge blowout party

One More Girl country-singing sisters Carly and Britt McKillip brandished a Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl championship ring after performing at the U.S. consulate’s Fourth of July garden party.

ONE MORE: The Fourth of July came a day early for U.S. consul-general Anne Callaghan, who hosted a national-day reception on the bunting-draped Shaughnessy residence’s tented lawn Thursday. It was her last such event as she’s to be diplomat in residence at the University of New Mexico. Her successor, Lynne Platt, is currently an embassy official in London.

Arms-toting honour guards from both nations paraded. In other uniformed combat, Seattle Seahawks community-relations VP Mike Flood brought a musket-ball-sized Super Bowl ring inscribed “World Champion” from the NFL team’s recent 43-8 defeat of the Denver Broncos. Trying it for size, Maple Ridge-based sisters Britt and Carly McKillip, the One More Girl country duo, sang from their debut album. Their next, The Hard Way, will release in September, when Callaghan leaves for Albuquerque and the Seahawks open their 2014 season against the Green Bay Packers.

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GETTING KICKS: Ty Speer’s job is to bring people here — millions of them — from the U.S. or anywhere else, including London and Glasgow where he’s lived since 2007. Speer arrived last week to succeed Rick Antonson as Tourism Vancouver’s president and CEO. Ty is short for Tyrus. Unlike a fellow Georgia native of that name, late outfielder Ty Cobb, he played second base. Getting him to home base in Vancouver, outgoing Arts Club Theatre executive director Howard Jang fronted a job-search squad while workshopping a musical based on Antonson’s book Route 66 Still Kicks. The show will include tunes the author and Peter Armstrong collected while driving “from Chicago to L.A.” Let’s guess Bobby Troup’s 1946 Route 66 will be one of them.

Also there and at the U.S. garden party with physician-wife Michelle Pereira, was Timmins-raised computer-science professor Arvind Gupta, who had moved into UBC’s president’s office one day earlier. “I’ve never had an administrative job in my life,” said Gupta, who hopes to retain some of his research activities. Never done anything censurable, either. The only blemish UBC’s background checkers found was a long-ago ticket for driving 15 km/h over the limit in a Kootenays community at 5 a.m.

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ON THE ROAD: Mary Pattison has long been leery of joining husband Jim aboard his long-range Bombardier business jet. That’s because a quick flip to Tennessee, say, might suddenly entail an added leg to Hanover, Bangkok or other locale where the global tycoon senses he might enhance the Pattison Group’s closing-on-$10 billion annual turnover. Still, a road trip to Saskatchewan sounded peachy, which is why two folk in their mid-80s headed east in a four-wheel-drive Dodge Ram pickup recently.

Not just for the scenery, though. Partly motivated by a farmer who orders a dozen $500,000 combine harvesters annually, Pattison parked the truck long enough to buy 16 John Deere agricultural machinery dealerships in small towns ringing his Saskatoon birthplace.

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BENCH STRENGTHENED: Former litigator, Supreme Court judge and cabinet minister Wally Oppal has the straight face and offhand manner of a standup comic. Spotting an old colleague at the U.S. garden party, he gravely asked a reporter: “How about photographing two washed-up AGs?” He meant himself and former B.C. attorney general Geoff Plant, who later joined the politician-pasture law firm of Heenan Blaikie and, when that outfit washed up in February, joined 16 of its lawyers to found Gail, Legge, Grant and Munroe.

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ANOTHER LEAP: Psychiatrist Shimi Kang may justifiably feel what Sigmund Freud called endpleasure over the performance of her Penguin-Randomhouse book The Dolphin Way. The length of its subtitle — A Parent’s Guide to Raising Healthy, Happy, and Motivated Kids Without Turning Into a Tiger — echoes the task involved. UBC clinical associate professor Kang, who is also Vancouver Coastal Health’s medical director of child and youth mental health programs, knows that task well. She and 14-year spouse Jeevan Khunkhun, the Carevest Capital commercial mortgagor VP, have children aged four, six and eight at home. With the debut book’s Canadian, U.S. and German editions prospering, Dr. Kang is writing a sequel, the Dolphin Way Leader’s Guide, aimed at adults and millennials.

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ON THEIR PARADE: Latincouver founder-director Paola Viviana Murillo fronted an annual prize-giving in Edgewater Casino this week. Carmen Aguirre, Patricia Cruz, Patricia Dabiri, Sophie Lavieri and Lluvia Menses received awards, the latter to cheers from members of the Latin Runners group she founded. Many may attend Latincouver’s Carnaval Del Sol this weekend that, according to weather forecasts, may entail more lluvia than sol.

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